


paralyzed down both sides

by soldierly



Series: reveille [1]
Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Assassins & Hitmen, Claiming, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierly/pseuds/soldierly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where there are no powers/superheroes. Bucky heads off to war and Steve stays behind, joins the NYPD. Bucky goes MIA in Russia -- and returns three years later with a secret that threatens them both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paralyzed down both sides

Fury spends twenty-five minutes building up to the _so there are a bunch of people who think you know exactly who the Winter Soldier is, and I'm betting they're right_ part of his speech. Steve takes it, cool and narrow-eyed as anyone innocent of accusations would be, and after a final, lingering _you know what will happen if someone catches you_ , Fury leaves, Steve's office door slamming behind him so forcefully that it rattles on its hinges.

"He's a pleasant fellow," Bucky says, emerging from wherever it was he had concealed himself. He does that -- slips in and out, effortless and silent.

"Bucky," Steve starts, and Bucky continues, cordial and low, "Good to know I've got a practice subject for my knifework."

" _Bucky_." Steve scrubs a hand back through his hair, leans into his desk. He's exhausted, because it's exhausting trying to investigate a case when he's sleeping with the man he's supposed to be hunting down. Bucky is there in an instant, so light on his feet that Steve doesn't know he's next to him until Bucky's touching his arm, up to his neck, finding pressure points and dipping his fingers into them, massaging until Steve is loose with his touch. "Bucky," Steve mumbles, feels like it's all he can say, a mantra that he can't bear to stop repeating. He's not supposed to know Bucky's name; he's not supposed to know _anything about him_.

Except he knows everything about him.

Bucky looks up, and the blue of his eyes is the same from when they were kids, fierce and canny and stubborn as all hell. The cuts on his knuckles, the roughness of his palms, the scar on his shoulder, awkwardly etched so it looked almost like a lopsided star, one arm dripping down into another, crisscrossed white lines, stark on Bucky's pale skin. Steve knows all of this.

"He's got no right to talk to you like that," Bucky mutters, hands dropping back to his sides. "Walkin' around and actin' like he _owns_ you."

"He's the chief of police," Steve says wearily. "He _does_."

And then there's that whip-snap of action that Steve has learned comes with Bucky now, as ingrained into him as his cat-like creeping is. His forearm slams into Steve's throat, forcing him back against the wall; even with the growing up Steve did while Bucky was away at the army, Bucky can push him around.

Steve's back thuds heavy and dull to the cracking plaster, his hands spread open and pressing at his sides, his head tipped up and away, as non-threatening as he could manage.

"Don't you remember," Bucky growls, "before I went away."

And oh, Steve does. All the ways Bucky learned to touch him, all the nights they spent crammed together in Steve's tiny bed, sheets balled up in the corner of the room because it was sleep with blankets or sleep apart, and they slept together once when they were sixteen, and then every night after that.

"Of course I do, Buck." Steve lifts a hand from the wall and Bucky's eyes drop, glaring until Steve replaces it, fingers flexing.

There's no denying it: this is his Bucky.

And yet not.

He won't talk about what happened in Russia. There's a three-year block of time that's missing from Steve's knowledge of Bucky, spanning between the two men in uniform at his door and the night Bucky had showed up, half-drunk with four guns holstered to him and new scars littered across his back. Steve had stared, had asked _Bucky?_ and Bucky had looked up at him with the most shattered, brittle smile and said _Who else, pal?_

 _I never got a call_ , Steve said, as Bucky tipped onto his couch, favoring one leg.

 _I know_. That smile again, a sharp slip of teeth. _They all think I'm dead, isn't it swell?_

No, Steve thought, but he didn't say it. Bucky slept for three days, pale and drawn. Thinner, too, but with more muscle mass, the hard bulk of it built up on his shoulders and in the deep of his thighs and in the strong line of his back.

When he did wake, Steve asked, _What happened?_ Three years, he told Bucky. Three whole years.

Bucky's gaze went distant, and then he looked at Steve in a way that made Steve feel like something was scraping up the inside of his spine. _I'm hungry_ , he said. _Those scrambled eggs of yours are real keen, you still make those?_

After that, Bucky disappeared for a while. He kept contact often enough, called from loud places and street phone boxes. He was staying in New York, he said, a few weeks later. Would it be okay if he stayed with Steve?

 _Of course_.

Bucky was cagey the entire time, glancing at windows, always turning off the lights in the rooms they weren't using. They picked back up again, more or less. Steve only had one bed, had only ever had one bed, and he wasn't the type of guy to put someone on the couch. Bucky wasn't the kinda guy to let someone give up a bed for him, either, so they ended up together, shoulder to shoulder, and eventually Bucky pushed over onto Steve's chest and laid there, breathing raggedly, until Steve kissed him. Bucky let it go on for a moment, then pulled away with a jolt, shoulders tense.

 _You went to someone else._

 _What?_

 _You kiss better. You --_

 _Three years_ , Steve said softly. _Bucky_. You were dead, he hadn't said. I thought you were gone.

After that, Bucky vanished more frequently. Steve got used to calls, got used to coming home once or twice a month to Bucky already in bed, no questions asked, no awkward conversation.

And then the bodies, when winter came. Fifteen of them.

Steve had found his niche in police work after Bucky went overseas, and quickly ascended to the investigative sector of the NYPD. He was used to seeing bodies.

Not bodies like those.

Three shots. One to a knee, one to the heart, and one to the forehead. All fired with neat precision. It wasn't a stretch to figure out that the perp was a military man -- or a cop. Steve had come across an unfortunate amount of dirty cops already in his two years in the force, and the thought of one committing the murders had sickened him.

Now he wishes it had been a cop.

Wishes he hadn't come home one night to Bucky bleeding from a grazing gunshot wound to his side, a sleek Mosin-Nagant rifle propped at his side. His head had snapped up, his face whiter than usual, and he'd said, "You're not s'posed to be home for an hour," and then passed out, blood spilling between his fingers.

If Steve were a better person (a less loyal person, he told himself on generous days), he would have turned Bucky in right there and then. Instead he patched up his side and put him to bed and sat, with shaking hands, next to the Russian sniper in his living room.

 _A soldier man_ , Steve had told one of the hounding reporters, and the next day it was all over the news: _The Winter Soldier, New York's deadliest serial killer_.

 _You have to tell me why_ , Steve said, and Bucky laughed roughly, stared at his scarred knuckles.

 _I can't._

 _Bucky._

 _If you want me to fuck off, I will. But I can't tell you._

He's not a serial killer. Steve knows that. He's been in rooms with serial killers, been pinned by their eyes and subjected to their honeyed lies, been face to face with the hungry haunt in their expressions and the threat in their voices, in the coil of their obsessive intelligence. Bucky isn't one of them. He's something else.

The last thing Steve wants to do (can _stand_ to do) is lose him again.

So he keeps his secrets.

Bucky bears down on him now, closer, smelling of mint, the way he always does. Another change from the war: he smokes mint cigarettes now. He's leaning into his arm, crushing Steve's throat enough to really get his attention. "You're no one's but _mine_ ," he hisses, and Steve can't do anything but nod in the small space he's allowed. Bucky gets like this, occasionally -- rarely this fiercely. It would worry Steve, save the fact that Bucky's eyes are wild not with real anger, but with _fear_. He's afraid; the man who endured three years in Russian hands and (quite possibly) is forcibly employed by the same people who worked him over is _afraid_ of Steve.

Or, not _of Steve_ , per se. Of Steve leaving him. Deciding that he's done with this game they're playing, that he's done loving Bucky and protecting him and keeping him.

Bucky's always had expressive eyes.

Steve brings his hands up gently, runs his fingers up Bucky's arm. Pulls, just lightly. Bucky lets up the pressure, shoulders squared, shuffling back a step with one knee bent, like he thinks Steve is going to take a swing at him.

"Easy," Steve says softly, coaxing and calming and a little hoarse. "Buck, you know you've got me."

"Damn straight," Bucky mutters, stands there looking at nothing until Steve touches his chest, eases his hands up to cup the rounds of Bucky's shoulders. "Coming home tonight?"

Surprised, "Are you?"

Bucky nods, fingers rubbing erratically against the outside of his thigh, where he keeps his knives stashed. "Yeah, I want," he says, and stops, and Steve leans in to kiss his cheek, the rough of his stubble.

"I'll be there. Late. Seven or eight. Pick up a pizza?"

"Got it." Bucky turns into his mouth, gives him a kiss that he'll feel for the rest of the day, the lingering almost-domesticity, and then he's gone, slipped out the window and onto the roof. Steve stares at the ruffling curtains until his eyes blur, then goes to shut the window, latching it with a rusty creak and erasing any sign that Bucky was ever there.


End file.
